If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.

I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.

There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.

I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.

I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.